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2 thoughts on “A Trail of Vermillion Blood”

All through this day, as I wandered down a path of discovery, searching for… (something. A word, “surrender”, that you so kindly provided), I heard a phrase, repeating in my mind from time to time: “I’m being led… like a lamb to slaughter.” And yet there was no attempt to escape, no desire to walk away.

And then I found this poem…

How much blood have we humans spilled in sacrifice, claiming the Will of the Divine? Why is suffering and death the only route to discovering the meaning and power of Life?

I do not know. And, detached as I am today, I feel no urge to seek beyond the path ahead of me. I am being led, like a lamb to slaughter, but is this a victory for Life or Death?

That will depend entirely on yourself, and what you choose to make of this experience. In a way, you are going through a kind of mental/spiritual suicide; a purification. They say that when you totally empty yourself, you can re-invent yourself. They are right, I’ve done it. I went into the emptiness and it became darkness, I hated it, but accepted it as if there could be nothing else, then I surfaced somewhere else and all there was, was light. It was not a religious experience, in fact it showed me the emptiness of religious performance, but it certainly was a spiritual experience. I’ve always been a fighter, and always bounced back until that day when I gave up. And then everything changed. I forgave everybody, unilaterally, and I forgave myself. Then I got a new lease on life, or a new life, whichever. I have never looked back and I know I never will. This path, this new life, is build on self-empowerment. Because of my willingness to engage that human condition of suffering and death and coming to the “pit of despair” I shocked myself into a new awareness of compassion and gradual empathy. I found out how deep and terrible is the relationship between sorrow and joy, they being like the two lovers in the old movie, Ladyhawke – aware of each other, unable to be together as lovers, he a wolf by night, she a hawk by day. Sorrow and joy, and that’s what an evolved human has to engage; to literally become a bridge between the two. No joy without sorrow; no sorrow without joy.

And someone will say, who wants sorrow? The one who knows that sorrow is the spiritual path that translates pain and suffering from the physical order into a spiritual dimension where compassion also resides and where healing can take place. Pain and suffering is “bestial” and to be avoided at almost any cost, but sorrow is identifying. It’s the spiritual path which understood then brings forth joy. This is a very ancient and deep philosophy of life that takes a long time to come to terms with. It is acutely demanding, but it sharpens the intellect as it exposes all the lies and traps within those common forces that pretend to give us life.

Since you are now following ~burning woman~ blog, if you find the time to “flip” through the stuff there, you may find more of my writes and rants on how I got to “here” and what it means. It would be better however if you ignored those posts and worked by/with/for yourself: that’s what self-empowerment means. My experiences can provide a cartoon sketch but you’re on your own, truly on your own here… The “quest” you seem to be embarking upon is sacred to you. Bottom line, no one has any right to advise you on what moves you must make. No one, that is, unless some unexpected spiritual help arrives, as those that came to teach me whom I called “the Teachers” and who were tough minded but fair. Would that every human on this world was as “lucky” as I was. They’ve been gone for 8 years now and even though they were an integral part of my life for 15 years, when they left I never missed them. They call that detachment – and that is very empowering.